Institutions have not collapsed. They have been outmanoeuvred.
What we are watching now is not the failure of the post-war order, but its quiet circumvention. Power no longer needs to break institutions to get what it wants. It can move through them, around them and, when necessary, in spite of them – without pulling the structure down.
Greenland shows how this works in practice.
The idea that a NATO member could openly discuss coercive options against another NATO member, justified on national security grounds and framed without evidentiary burden, would once have been unthinkable. Today, it is discussed calmly, procedurally and without embarrassment. Not because institutions are weak, but because they were never designed for this scenario.
Institutions were built to manage rivalry between blocs. They were designed to deter external aggression, channel competition and raise the cost of unilateral action. They assume power is contested, reputational cost matters and security claims are subject to scrutiny. They work best when no single actor can rewrite the rules alone.
Greenland breaks those assumptions.
This is not a grey zone conflict or a proxy war. There is no ambiguity over sovereignty, no external adversary forcing escalation and no urgent collective defence trigger. Instead, there is a dominant power invoking existential security, a smaller ally unable to enforce restraint and an institution caught between objection and irrelevance.
What matters is not whether force is used. It is that force sits comfortably at the end of a menu.
Current reporting makes clear that while military action is feasible, it is not the preferred tool. Instead, power moves through a menu of graduated pressure:
- Economic leverage and capital discrimination
• Treaty reinterpretation to bypass old constraints
• Self-determination narratives used as strategic tools
• Procedural delay and administrative friction
Only if these fail does force enter the conversation. This is the new model. Power no longer needs to break institutions. It needs to exhaust them. This is coercion without collapse. Institutions are not red lines. They are terrain.
National security is the solvent that makes this possible. Once a move is framed as existential, evidentiary standards fall away. Alliance norms soften. Institutional process becomes background noise. Rules still exist, but only until power decides otherwise.
This is not unique to Greenland. But Greenland is unusually clean as a case study because it strips away excuses. There is no emergency, no immediate threat and no plausible claim that institutions are being overwhelmed by circumstance. What remains is choice.
NATO’s dilemma here is structural, not political. It cannot credibly restrain a dominant member without risking collapse. It can object rhetorically, delay procedurally and seek de-escalation. What it cannot do is enforce. Institutions that rely on consensus cannot restrain actors willing to bear the cost of dissent.
This is where the contrast with Ukraine matters.
Ukraine shows institutions stretching outward. Coalitions forming. Rules adapted to enable action. Greenland shows the reverse. Institutions unable to constrain inward coercion. Both are features of the same system. Institutions can still mobilise power externally. They struggle to restrain it internally.
The result is a system that still looks ordered, but behaves differently. Smaller allies inside institutions are more exposed, not less. Predictability weakens. Procedural warfare replaces formal veto. Belonging to the system no longer guarantees protection from power within it.
That has consequences beyond geopolitics. When institutional protection becomes conditional, so does asset security, alliance cover and policy predictability. The price of permission rises quietly – and it is paid first by those who assumed the system would restrain behaviour automatically.
None of this requires institutional collapse. In fact, collapse would be counterproductive. Institutions still provide venues, legitimacy when useful and process when convenient. They are not disappearing. They are being repurposed.
That is the danger.
Expect more internal coercion, not less. More bespoke arrangements. More legal and procedural manoeuvring. More overlapping frameworks that look reassuring but constrain little. Less clarity, not less order. Institutions still matter. But they no longer draw the red lines.
How We Think
In a system where power defines security and rules adjust afterward, the critical task is no longer defending institutions as they were designed, but understanding how they are now being used.
The greatest risk is not institutional collapse. It is assuming constraint still exists where it quietly no longer does.